The Molecule of More

party line, others have more moderate ideologies. They are the inde-
pendent voters who are open to political persuasion. Influencing the 
opinions of this group is essential for a successful campaign, and neuro-
science may shed light on the best ways to do it.
The art of persuasion intersects with neuroscience at the point 
where decisions are made and action is taken—that is, the intersec-
tion of desire dopamine and control dopamine circuits where we weigh 
options and make decisions about what we think will best serve our 
future. Whether it’s grabbing a bottle of detergent from the grocery 
shelf or pulling the lever for a political candidate, it looks like this 
should be in the realm of control dopamine, asking the simple ques-
tion, What’s best for my long-term future? But convincing control dopamine, 
overcoming all the counterarguments that inevitably arise, is hard to do 
with a bumper sticker or a 30-second television commercial. And from 
a purely practical point of view, it’s probably not worth doing, anyway. 

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Rational decisions are fragile things, always open to revision as new 
evidence comes along. Irrationality is more enduring, and both desire 
dopamine and the H&N pathways can be taken advantage of to guide 
people toward making irrational decisions. The most effective tools are 
fear, desire, and sympathy.
Fear may be the most effective of them all, which is why attack ads, 
commercials that portray the opposing candidate as dangerous, are so 
popular. Fear speaks to our most primitive concerns: Can I stay alive? 
Will my children be safe? Will I be able to keep my job so I’ll have money for food 
and rent? Stirring up fear is an indispensable part of almost any political 
campaign. Encouraging Americans to hate one another is an unfortu-
nate side effect.
WHY ARE WE AMUSING 
OURSELVES TO DEATH?
In the provocative 1985 book 
Amusing Ourselves to Death
, 
media scholar Neil Postman argued that political discourse 
was being diminished by the rise of television. He observed 
that television news had by then acquired many of the charac-
teristics of entertainment. He quoted television newscaster 
Robert MacNeil: “The idea, he writes, ‘is to keep everything 
brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to 
provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action, 
and movement. You are required . . . to pay attention to no 
concept, no character, and no problem for more than a few 
seconds at a time.’” More than three decades later, news on 
the internet is the same way. Even outlets considered to be 
serious cram their home pages with dozens of brief, provoc-
ative headlines. Most lead not too long, thoughtful material 
for reading but to short, slick videos for watching.
Postman asserted that this poses a profound problem, 
but he made no guess as to why we prefer entertainment 

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over serious thought when we debate the important ques-
tions the nation must address. Thirty years on, the question 
remains. Of the infinite forms communication technology 
might have taken, why, like TV news, has internet news ele-
vated brevity and novelty over in-depth analysis? Aren’t the 
events of the world worth more attention?
The answer is desire dopamine. A short, slick story stands 
out from the landscape—it is 
salient
. It delivers a quick hit of 
dopamine and grabs our attention. Thus we click through a 
dozen provocative headlines that lead to kitten videos and 
skip the long essay about healthcare. The healthcare story is 
more pertinent to our lives, but the work of processing that 
story is no match for the easy pleasure of those dopamine 
hits. Control dopamine could push back, but it is invariably 
overpowered by the flood of whatever is new and shiny, and 
such things are the currency of the Internet.
Where will this lead? Probably not to a renaissance of 
long-form journalism. As quick-hit stories grow more prev-
alent in the news environment, they must get shorter and 
shallower to compete. Where does such a cycle end? Even 
words may not be bedrock. Most cellphones now offer to 
replace the text of typed phrases with something faster and 
simpler (and cruder) to catch the eye: an emoji.
Postman may not have known the neuroscientific cause 
of all this, but he understood its effect: “And so, we move 
rapidly into an information environment which may rightly 
be called trivial pursuit. As the game of that name uses facts 
as a source of amusement, so do our sources of news. It has 
been demonstrated many times that a culture can survive 
misinformation and false opinion. It has not yet been demon-
strated whether a culture can survive if it takes the measure 
of the world in twenty-two minutes. Or if the value of its 
news is determined by the number of laughs it provides.”

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TO HAVE LOVED AND LOST HURTS MORE
In addition to tapping into primitive needs, another reason fear works 
so well is loss aversion, meaning that the pain of loss is stronger than the 
pleasure of gain. For example, the pain of losing $20 is greater than 
the pleasure of winning $20. That’s why most people reject a 50/50 
coin toss wager when the amount of money is significant. In fact, most 
people reject a $30 payoff for a $20 bet. The payoff must be double the 
wager, $40 in this case, before most people will agree to the bet.
A mathematician would say that when there is a 50/50 chance of
winning, and the payoff is bigger than the bet, the gamble has a net positive 
value—you should go for it. (It’s important to note that this works only if
the bet is affordable. It would be rational to bet $20 you’d spend going to 
a movie, but not $200 you need to pay the rent.) Yet most people reject 
the opportunity to win $30 on a $20 coin toss. Why would they do that?
When scientists performed brain scans during wagering experi-
ments, they naturally looked at dopamine first. They found that neural 
activity in the desire circuit increased after wins and decreased after 
losses—as would be expected. But the changes weren’t symmetrical. 
The magnitude of the decrease after losses was larger than the increase 
after gains. The dopamine circuit was mirroring the subjective experi-
ence. The effect of loss was greater than the effect of gain.
What neural pathways were behind this imbalance? What was 
amplifying the loss reaction? The researchers turned their attention to 
the amygdala—an H&N structure that processes fear and other nega-
tive emotions. Every time a participant lost a bet, their amygdala fired 
up, intensifying feelings of distress. It was H&N emotion that was driv-
ing loss aversion. The H&N system doesn’t care about the future. It 
doesn’t care about things we might get. It cares about what we have 
right now. And when those things are threatened, out comes the expe-
rience of fear and distress.
Other studies found similar results. In one experiment, participants 
were randomly assigned to receive a coffee mug. Half the group got one, 
and half didn’t. Immediately after handing out the mugs, the research-
ers gave the participants an opportunity to trade among themselves: 

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mugs for money. The mug owners were told to set a price they would 
accept, and the mug buyers were told to set a price they would pay. The 
mug owners asked for an average of $5.78, and the mug buyers offered 
an average of $2.21. The sellers were reluctant to part with their mugs. 
The buyers were reluctant to part with their money. Both buyers and 
sellers were reluctant to give up what they had.
The essential role of the amygdala in loss aversion was confirmed 
by something called an experiment of nature. Experiments of nature 
are illnesses and injuries that reveal important pieces of scientific 
knowledge. They are fascinating because they usually represent “exper-
iments” that would be grossly unethical for a scientist to carry out. No 
one’s going to ask a surgeon to open up a person’s head and cut out 
their amygdala. But once in a while it happens on its own. In this case, 
scientists studied two patients who had Urbach–Wiethe disease, a rare 
condition that destroys the amygdala on both sides of the brain. When 
these individuals were presented with wagers, they attached equal 
weight to gain and loss. Without the amygdala, loss aversion vanished.
In a way, loss aversion is simple arithmetic. Gain is about a better 
future, so only dopamine is involved. The possibility of gain gets a +1 
from dopamine. It gets zero from H&N, because H&N is only con-
cerned with the present. Loss is also about the future, so it concerns 
dopamine, and gets a –1. Loss concerns H&N, too, because it affects 
things in our possession right now. So H&N gives it a –1. Put them 
together, and gain = +1, loss = –2, exactly what we see with the brain 
scans and the wagering experiments.
Fear, like desire, is primarily a future concept—dopamine’s realm. 
But the H&N system gives a boost to the pain of loss in the form of
amygdala activation, tipping our judgment when we have to make deci-
sions about the best way to manage risk.
TO PROVIDE OR PROTECT?
Although loss aversion is a universal phenomenon, there are differences 
among groups. Overall, dopaminergic liberals are more likely to respond 

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to messages that offer benefits, like opportunities for more resources, 
whereas H&N conservatives are more likely to respond to messages that 
offer security, like the ability to keep the things they currently have. 
Liberals support programs they believe will lead to a better future, such 
as subsidized education, urban planning, and government-funded tech-
nology initiatives. Conservatives prefer programs that protect their cur-
rent way of life, such as defense spending, law-and-order initiatives, and 
limits on immigration.
Liberals and conservatives both have their reasons for focusing on 
threats versus benefits, reasons they believe are rational conclusions 
resulting from thoughtful weighing of evidence. That’s probably not 
true. It’s more likely that there is a fundamental difference in the way 
their brains are wired.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska selected a group of
volunteers based on their political beliefs and measured their level 
of arousal as they were shown pictures that evoked desire or distress. 
Arousal is sometimes used to describe sexual excitement, but more 
broadly it’s a measure of how engaged a person is with what’s going 
on around him. When a person is interested and engaged, his heart 
beats a little faster, his blood pressure goes up a bit, and small amounts 
of perspiration are released from his sweat glands. Doctors call this a 
sympathetic response. The most common way to measure the sympa-
thetic response is to attach electrodes to a person’s body, and measure 
how easily electricity flows. Sweat is salt water, which conducts elec-
tricity better than dry skin. The more aroused a person is, the easier 
the electricity flows.
After the electrodes were attached to the research participants, they 
were shown three distressing photos (a spider on a man’s face, an open 
wound with maggots, and a crowd fighting with a man) and three pos-
itive photos (a happy child, a bowl of fruit, and a cute rabbit). Lib-
erals had a stronger response to the positive photos, conservatives to 
the negative ones. Because the researchers were measuring a biological 
reaction—perspiration—the response couldn’t have been intention-
ally controlled by the participants. Something more fundamental than 
rational choice was being measured.

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Next they used an eye-tracking device to determine how much time 
volunteers spent looking at a collage of pictures—positive and negative 
ones displayed at the same time. Both groups, liberal and conserva-
tive, spent more time looking at the negative pictures. This result is 
consistent with the universal phenomenon of loss aversion. However, 
the conservatives spent much more time gazing at the fear-provoking 
images, while the liberals divided their attention more evenly. Evidence 
of loss aversion was present in both groups, but it was more pronounced 
among conservatives.
WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU CONSERVATIVE
The relationship between conservatism and threat goes in both direc-
tions. Conservatives are more likely than liberals to focus on threat. At 
the same time, when people of either inclination feel threatened, they 
become more conservative. It’s well known that terrorist attacks boost the 
popularity of conservative candidates. But even small threats—threats 
so small we’re not even consciously aware of them—nudge people to 
the right.
To test the relationship between subtle threat and conservative ide-
ology, researchers approached students on a college campus and asked 
them to fill out a survey regarding their political beliefs. Half the par-
ticipants were seated in an area next to a hand sanitizer, a reminder 
of the risk of infection; the other half were taken to a different area. 
Those who sat near the hand sanitizer reported higher levels of moral, 
social, and fiscal conservatism. The same result occurred when a sepa-
rate group of students was asked to use a germ-killing hand wipe before 
sitting down at a computer to answer the survey questions. It’s worth 
noting that elections are held during flu season, and touch-screen vot-
ing machines spread germs. As a result, it’s not uncommon to see hand 
sanitizer dispensers available for voters’ use at polling places.
Professor Glenn D. Wilson, a psychologist who studies the influence 
of evolution on human behavior, joked that during election season, 

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bathroom signs that say “Employees must wash hands before returning 
to work” are billboards for the Republican Party. 
NEUROCHEMICAL MODULATION 
OF MORAL JUDGMENT
Drugs work, too. Scientists can make people behave more like conser-
vatives by giving them medication that boosts the H&N neurotransmit-
ter serotonin. In one experiment, participants were given a single dose 
of the serotonergic drug citalopram, commonly used to treat depres-
sion.
3
After taking the medication, they became less focused on the 
abstract concept of justice and more focused on protecting individuals 
from harm. This was demonstrated by their performance in something 
called the “ultimatum game.” Here’s how it works.
There are two players in the ultimatum game. One player, called 
the proposer, is given a sum of money (e.g., $100) and told to share 
it with the other player, who is the responder. The proposer can offer 
the responder as much or as little as she likes. If the responder accepts 
the proposer’s offer, they both keep the money. On the other hand, 
if the responder rejects the offer, neither player gets anything. It’s a 
one-shot game. Each player has only one chance.
A perfectly rational responder would accept any offer, even $1. If she 
accepts the offer, she’s financially better off than before. But if she rejects 
the offer, she gains nothing. Therefore, rejecting any offer, no matter how 
small, is contrary to her financial self-interest. Yet in reality, low offers are 
rejected because they offend our sense of fair play. A low offer makes us 
want to punish the proposer—teach her a lesson by inflicting financial 
3 Just one dose of a serotonergic antidepressant isn’t enough to influence mood. 
It usually takes a few weeks of daily dosing to see an effect. The first dose makes 
the level of serotonin in the brain go up, but after a few weeks of treatment things 
become more complicated. By the time the depression starts to lift, the brain 
has adapted to the medication in such a way that the serotonin system is more 
active in some places and less in others. No one really knows how antidepressants 
improve mood.

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harm on her. On average, responders tend to punish proposers who offer 
30 percent or less of the money they were told to share.
That number, 30 percent, is not fixed in stone. Different people, 
under different conditions, will make different decisions. Researchers at 
Cambridge and Harvard Universities found that participants who were 
given citalopram were twice as likely to accept low offers. Combining 
those results with the results of additional tests of moral judgment and 
behavior, the researchers concluded that the citalopram recipients were 
reluctant to harm the proposer by rejecting her offer. They found the 
opposite effect when they gave participants a drug that lowered sero-
tonin levels: they were more willing to inflict harm to serve the greater 
good of enforcing standards of fairness.
The researchers concluded that the serotonin-boosting drug 
increased what they called harm aversion. Increasing serotonin shifts 
moral judgment away from an abstract goal (enforcing fairness) toward 
an avoidance of carrying out actions that might harm someone (depriv-
ing the proposer of her share of the money). Thinking back to the 
trolley problem, the logical approach is to kill one person to save five, 
whereas the harm-aversion approach is to refuse to take someone’s life 
for the benefit of other people. Using drugs to influence these decisions 
has the unsettling name of neurochemical modulation of moral judgment.
The single dose of citalopram made people more willing to for-
give unfair behavior and less willing to view harming another person 
as permissible, an attitude consistent with an H&N predominance. The 
researchers described this behavior as prosocial at the individual level. Pro-